Cycles

by Janie Nicoll, 23 Jul 2008

Things seem cyclical. Maybe that is just the way of things, the order of the universe, maybe it is human nature to assess and reassess but it seems to be happening to me a lot at the moment. Looking at things with different eyes or a different viewpoint, maybe with the benefit of hindsight…. This is the case with the Jo Spence exhibition currently on at GOMA. I was asked to do a couple of photography workshops with adults and teenagers and I enjoyed having a discussion about the work, especially with the teenagers, being able to talk about the effects of the Miners Strike and Thatcherism, as well as putting the work in a perspective afforded by time passing, seeing its significance in the grand scheme of things.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of music from the period before I had children, there seems to have been a bit of a hiatus around that time. People warn you that you’ll lose a third of your brainpower when you have a baby, and it does indeed feel like cotton wool or a frontal lobotomy may be inhibiting things a bit. Most cultural input from then is a bit of a blur. It also marks a change in my going out habits from being a regular club-goer, to someone far more limited in the nocturnal activities department.

I am now working my way through my CD and vinyl collections, re-listening and reassessing a lot of music that had been relegated to a high up shelf. The Cocteau Twins are one such band. Thinking about them takes me back to Edinburgh in the mid Eighties, I went to see a lot of bands back then. From my record collection you can tell that I had a habit of being interested in a band when they were really new, but losing interest by the time they got more mainstream, usually by the second album. I think this happened with the Cocteau Twins as I have their first album and singles but none of the others….. Listening to them again it’s obvious why they were unique and influential. I remember seeing them play and they were like nothing else at that time, with there abstracted lyrics and the wall of sound they created. Its often mentioned how Edinburgh bands never “make it” in relation to the mainstream success of many Glasgow bands, but again it depends on how you rate success. Again with the benefit of hindsight it’s easier to assess the contribution of many Edinburgh bands that didn’t make the mainstream e.g. The Cocteau Twins; the Fire Engines; Joseph K and whose lack of commercial success made their careers relatively short-lived but not without influence.

The next Edinburgh band that caught my imagination was the Shop Assistants, with their double drums and catchy pop tunes. They were much more rough and ready, but they also blew me away. By that stage I had also become involved in the grassroots music scene happening in Edinburgh and Glasgow, with the influence of East Kilbrides’ Jesus and Mary Chain, who had recently moved to London; and Alan Magee’s Creation Records, encouraging the do-it-yourself ethos that produced a whole range of bands including Rote Kappelle, Jesse Garon and the Desperadoes, The Vaselines, The Soup Dragons, The Pastels, and Teenage Fanclub.

Recently there was a BBC Scotland programme “Caledonia Dreaming” that attempted to trace this DIY ethos from Postcard Records (which began in a tenement flat just along the road from where I now live) to the present, ending with Franz Ferdinand. Inevitably this programme managed to omit the vast majority of bands that made up the independent Scottish music scene, side tracked, as all these programmes do, into highlighting the careers of Hue and Cry, and the Proclaimers… another missed opportunity… The grassroots music scene and artscene in Glasgow and Edinburgh are still as interrelated as they ever were… each one as important to the either… and long may that continue..

For the Garlands exhibition I have decided to make things ‘Floral-tastic’, taking the title literally with the intention of creating an installation that is awash with colour and the scent of flowers.. Not just musically, the title of the exhibition has prompted me to reassess areas of my life that I thought were in the past. I have revisited the gardens of both my grandmothers, and photographed the flowers that still remain from when they lived there. I have also created a short piece of writing about my relationship with my grandmothers, who were both very influential to me. I am interested in exploring this generational aspect, obviously in relation to the age group of the residents we are working with at Callendar Park. Throughout the residency it has been a theme that I have been interested in exploring – what you can and can’t do, what is possible, what is not possible. Whether its been dropping things from the tower blocks themselves, a la J.G. Ballard’s “High Rise” or going back in time, metaphorically or otherwise, its all to be explored….

Also out of the blue I received a comment on MySpace (www.myspace.com/janienicoll) from Robin Guthrie about my artworks….

“life, imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, imitating life, imitating art, imitating life….”

Yes, things seem strangely cyclical indeed.